Walter Gropius Quotes

#1. Society needs a good image of itself. That is the job of the architect.

Walter Gropius

#2. Children should be introduced right from the start to the potentialities of their environment, to the physical and psychological laws that govern the visual world, and to the supreme enjoyment that comes from participating in the creative process of giving form to one's living space.

Walter Gropius

#3. Limitation makes the creative mind inventive.

Walter Gropius

#4. If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality.

Walter Gropius

#5. We want to create the purely organic building, boldly emanating its inner laws, free of untruths or ornamentation.

Walter Gropius

#6. Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word. Thus it is a fundamental requirement of all artistic creativity that every student undergo a thorough training in the workshops of all branches of the crafts.

Walter Gropius

#7. Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.

Walter Gropius

#8. How can we expect our students to become bold and fearless in thought and action if we encase them in sentimental shrines feigning a culture which has long since disappeared?

Walter Gropius

#9. Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning.

Walter Gropius

#10. Architecture begins where engineering ends.

Walter Gropius

#11. A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.

Walter Gropius

#12. The mind is like an umbrella. Its most useful when open.

Walter Gropius

#13. A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of authentic democracy.

Walter Gropius

#14. The Bauhaus fights imitation, inferior craftsmanship and artistic dilettantism

Walter Gropius

#15. However often the thread may be torn out of your hands, you must develop enough patience to wind it up again and again.

Walter Gropius

#16. Since art is dead in the actual life of civilized nations, it has been relegated to these grotesque morgues, museums.

Walter Gropius

#17. Specialists are people who always repeat the same mistakes.

Walter Gropius